We were recently contracted to help a local rescue group redesign and develop their website. K911 ResQ is an animal rescue group located in Torrance, California. Their mission is to save as many special needs, senior, homeless, and stray dogs as possible – because everyone deserves a wonderful FUR-EVER home! Of course, K911 ResQ doesn’t only take in dogs. They have been known to rescue cats and even a seagull as well!
I first met Sabrina and Chris, the owners and founders of K911 ResQ, at their other business, Cosmic Brewery, also located in Torrance. We bonded over, not only their craft beer, but also our mutual love of animals. K911 ResQ already had a website, but like with all things, it was time for a redesign. The rescue needed something fresh. They needed a design that would fit their mission statement and current branding. The redesign needed to be professional looking, yet inviting due to the nature of the business. We also needed to revisit their mobile optimizations since they didn’t have much control over that on the existing platform either.
It had been some time since they had an update, and they were a little frustrated with their inability to make changes to the content in a timely manner. In the world of rescues, there are always events, new animals, adoptions, and more, so being able to have a website updated regularly is extremely important.
And that’s where we came in.
The previous site was cutesy, but lacked the level of cohesiveness that Sabrina was looking for. It had a ton of great videos and photographs of dogs, but they were mostly stock images. The site didn’t really showcase any of the animals that had been rescued by K911 ResQ. It was overloaded with graphics and did not give off a professional vibe to the rescue. It also did not reflect the message that this rescue was focusing on: senior and handicapped animals. The previous website was a great starting point, and it definitely helped with their online presence, but with all businesses that hope to take it to the next level, there comes a point where you need to hire a professional to help walk you through the things you need and how to best implement them.
For the design process I knew I needed to stick with K911 ResQ’s branding colors: red and black. I started off by giving their current logo a pop of color by making just the Q red. I found that this just added a little flair to the logo, and they loved it. It was a change that they immediately began implementing into the rest of their marketing collateral.
Because K911 ResQ is a rescue devoted to the unwanted senior and handicapped animals, I wanted to showcase these rescued dogs as much as possible. For a rescue organization, it is imperative that we used pictures of the rescued and adopted dogs and cats as much as we could. I did not want to turn to stock photography for this particular website. Thankfully Sabrina and Chris had plenty of photos and videos to choose from.
One of the biggest reasons we wanted to push for a new site was because without a professional appearance, K911 ResQ was having a hard time getting support from companies and organizations that helped out rescue groups. Due to the previous website being out of date, and having almost no visible record of successful rescues, adoptions, and fosters, they weren’t eligible to receive food or money donations. With the new site now live, Sabrina can reapply for the aid, and there will be no question as to how successful their rescue efforts truly are.
For the actual site, we moved from their previous Wix setup over to a new Wordpress platform, so that we could control more aspects of the website, and get a little more control over where it was hosted and what kinds of optimizations we could do for it. This also allowed us to create a completely customized design for them, so they weren’t locked into any pre-built templates, and going forward updates will be a lot easier to manage.
We added a calendar for them, so all of their fundraisers, meetings, and events can be easily found online and shared to social media. The events also filter into a list on the home page, making it easy to see at a glance what is coming up.
Some other features we added were a search function that overlays the site, making it easy to type and find pages with specific words, a FAQ page, and we added a lot more information about what K911 ResQ does and how they do it. Finally, one of the biggest features they were interested in was getting their Instagram feed to show on the website. For many rescues, Instagram is a priceless tool to get help, share news, and keep people updated. This gives K911 ResQ a way to share updates all the time as they normally would, and they don’t have to take an extra step to share it on their website.
In the end, they were very happy with the new website, and feel that it is going to be an important tool for future endeavors. If you would like to visit their site and see for yourself what they do and how we helped them get there, you can go to https://k911resq.com.
